Hah! I wouldn'thave taken you for an ELO fan. I just adore Face the Music andEldorado and will admit to having a soft spot for Out of the Blue aswell. I love Jeff Lynne's tanky roomy drum sounds.
fd
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Dickson <mike.dickson@ gmail.com>
To: newmellotrongroup@ yahoogroups. com
Sent: Sat, Aug 15, 2009 7:38 pm
Subject: [newmellotrongroup] Facing The Music
I've just acquired a copy of the remastered ELO album 'Face TheMusic'and it's a substantial improvement on the rather muddy and compressedoriginal (which makes me think that remastering is only one of thethings that has happened here) that I played when I was about 14 or so.Musically it's better than I thought, though not a patch on the rathermore inventive 'Eldorado' and sort of indicates the somewhat depressingdownward trajectory that led to their more ∗meh∗ pop stuff that I can'treally relate to.
However.
They constantly credit Richard Tandy with 'Mellotron' on their albumswhen I hear nary a note of the instrument on
any of theirrecordings. Their endless split screen 'performance' videos (such as
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=ivFM0pYyUcY)show a Mellotron on therig, but never seems to be used and appears to be little more than akeyboard stand. The three or four guys in the band who actually playedstrings were pretty much only cosmetically used subsequent to theiralbum 'On The Third Day', their use being supplanted by a full stringorchestra under Louis Clark's direction who could actually play in tuneat more or less the same time, so it wasn't used to beef up thestrings. The choir they used was a thirty voice selection ofsessionists, so no eight voice choir in there as well.
So...where did they ever use a Mellotron?
-- Mike Dickson, EdinburghFree Music Project: http://www.mikedick son.org.uk/ Or http://www.last. fm/music/ Mike+DicksonOr http://soundcloud. com/mikedicksonOr http://www.planetme llotron.com/ revd4.htm# mikedickson